More police details mean more money, less rest for Quincy cops

Patrick Ronan The Patriot Ledger @pronan_Ledger

Saturday

May 21, 2016 at 6:00 AMMay 24, 2016 at 4:55 PM

A Patriot Ledger review of one week's worth of Quincy police detail assignments and work rosters from last June found that 110 officers – more than half of the force – worked details. Each officer, on average, logged nearly 20 detail hours that week on top of their 40-hour work week.

During a one-week period last year, more than half the Quincy police force logged an average of close to 20 hours outside their regular schedule to provide a police presence at construction sites, businesses or events.

A Patriot Ledger review of one week’s worth of Quincy police private detail assignments and work rosters from last June found that 110 officers worked details, earning on average an extra $961 on top of the pay for a 40-hour work week. While only a snapshot of the city’s private police detail system, the review suggests a significant percentage of officers are working what amounts to 12 and 16-hour days, leading some experts to worry about an overworked police force.

Despite a state push to introduce flagmen in Massachusetts eight years ago, private police details remain the standard in most communities. Police, who negotiate rates as part of their city or town contract, are generally among a community’s highest paid employees when private detail pay and overtime are factored into their salaries.

In Quincy, where officer detail rates are between $44 and $99 an hour, the police detail system came under scrutiny recently when Lt. Thomas Corliss, a 22-year veteran of the force, was suspended for six months without pay after an internal investigation found that on 21 different occasions last year Corliss’ city shifts overlapped with private details and/or other city time, a practice known as double-dipping.

This year, the department will spend $38,922 on a new computer software program that Police Chief Paul Keenan said will flag potential abuse of paid detail policies and keep better track of the number of hours officers work.

For years, Corliss has been one of the highest-paid city employees. He was the highest paid in 2015, collecting $265,568 when including his base salary, overtime and detail pay.

Earlier this year, city officials said an outside law enforcement agency had launched a criminal investigation into the Corliss matter.

To learn more about how the system works, The Patriot Ledger obtained a week’s worth of Quincy Police Department private detail and regular daily rosters – from June 7 to 13, 2015. Private details are typically higher during warmer months because of construction projects. The time period was also shortly after Keenan, the Quincy chief, had implemented a new policy that gave lieutenants and captains the same access to private detail assignments as sergeants and patrol officers.

Concerns about work hours

The Patriot Ledger review found that 52 officers each logged a workday of at least 12 hours, including their regular shift and private detail work. Of those, 28 officers each logged more than 16 hours in a single day that week.

One officer logged 23 hours of work on June 8 – 15 hours of details on top of his regular eight-hour shift for the city. A pair of officers got paid for 20 hours of work on June 11, each logging 12-hour overnight details after working their regular shifts earlier in the day.

Bryan Vila, a former Los Angeles police officer and current criminology professor at the Washington State University Sleep and Performance Research Center, said longer hours for officers mean less recovery time for the government employees who need it most.

“The reality is that when you start having officers work more than their eight-hour shift, the risks of an accident, an error, or an injury just don’t increase linearly, they start increasing exponentially,” Vila said.

Vila said studies have shown that people who are up for more than 17 hours consecutively have the decision-making ability, hand-eye coordination and vigilance of someone with a .05 blood-alcohol level.

“The underlying biology behind this is so basic, but we always have ignored it with cops,” Vila.

In the one week reviewed by the Ledger, eight Quincy officers took sick time – meaning they didn’t show up for a regular city shift – within two days of working details on their scheduled off-days or within two days of working 16-plus hours on a single day.

Eileen McAnneny, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said private details, many of which consist of a police officer directing traffic at a private construction site, can take officers’ energy away from their taxpayer-funded shifts.

“In the increasingly complex world in which we live, to make sure they’re alert and able to perform their primary duties should be the priority of municipal leaders,” McAnneny said.

But the Quincy police chief said his officers do a good job managing their schedules and spreading details throughout the year to make sure they’re not overworked.

“Officers fluctuate their schedules. They may work a lot this week, and then they’ll work less in another week,” Keenan said. “They generally don’t exceed what is reasonable and put themselves in harm’s way. The officers are pretty well-rested when they come into work.”

Quincy’s city government currently has 22 employees out on injury collecting workers’ compensation. None are police officers.

The police department has a health and wellness policy that prevents officers from working more than 16 consecutive hours, but Keenan said sometimes officers are given special permission by the on-duty captain or lieutenant to exceed 16-consecutive-hours limit. He said the alternative would be to assign a new officer to complete the detail, which would require the contractor to pay a four-hour minimum for a few extra minutes of work.

Corliss, the officer accused of abusing the detail system last year, was suspended for five days in 2003 for working more than the 16-hour limit, according to records from the state’s Civil Service Commission.

Demand for private details is climbing

Keenan, the Quincy chief, recently estimated that total police detail pay for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, will be roughly $4 million, a 33 percent increase from the $3 million in detail pay last year. The increase is largely the result of a building boom across the city, he said.

Corliss’ alleged abuse of the detail system came at a time when the number of detail shifts for Quincy officers was on the rise. Last May, Keenan decided to give lieutenants and captains the same access to detail shifts as sergeants and patrol officers in an effort to keep up with the demand.

The patrolmen’s union successfully grieved the chief’s decision and the demand for officers to work details continues to climb.

Younger officers have less interest in working extra hours, the chief said.

“It’s a culture shift in the mind-set of the younger officers. My generation, we all worked details. It was a way of life,” he said.

Keenan said occasionally the city will get officers from other towns to work details, and he said he’s considering introducing a new policy that would allow retired officers to work details.

Terrence Downing, president of the Quincy Police Patrolmen’s Union, declined to comment when a reporter contacted him about this story.

110 -- The number of officers who worked details (includes six lieutenants, 14 sergeants, 90 patrol officers).$105,711 was the total amount of private detail payments made for that week.